Cock-a-doodle-doo! The first week of the Olympic Games is such a success that it’s hard to rank the things to be enthusiastic about. The opening ceremony, of course, will be remembered for a long time, bold and insolent, often poetic, like this magical horse galloping on the Seine. Good luck to the next host cities to do better than Paris 2024. Horse riding in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles; fencing under the glass roof of the Grand Palais; beach volleyball under the Eiffel Tower; the triathlon on the cobblestones of the Trocadéro; archery at the Invalides: the choices of Tony Estanguet and his services masterfully sublimate the best of French heritage. If the organization of the Olympic Games were an Olympic event, we would happily give 18/20 to the Parisian proposal.
As in London in 2012, the magic happened instantly. At the time, the arrival of a lookalike of the Queen by parachute during the opening ceremony had turned the British people, who were skeptical at the time, upside down. What if this time it was the fanfare between Aya Nakamura and the Republican Guard, the musical gathering of French talents, the very official and the very unofficial? Thomas Jolly’s ceremony was watched by 23.2 million French people, the second highest audience of all time. Already 54 million French people have watched at least one minute of the Olympics on France Télévisions, according to the group. Unprecedented!
On the sporting front, the athletes have offered us exceptional performances, like the victories of Léon Marchand or the exploits of French fencing. After six days of competition, France is in third place in the medal table, only ahead of China and the United States, and this provisional order of arrival says everything about the major feat of our champions.
In the end, only the elements are unleashing themselves against French audacity. After the rain during the opening ceremony, the triathlon was threatened by storms. In extremis, luck smiled on Emmanuel Macron, Anne Hidalgo and Tony Estanguet, with these satisfactory samples on the pollution of the Seine, obtained at the last moment. A question mark remains over the proper holding of the mixed relay triathlon, scheduled for Monday. The surfing and sailing events are somewhat spoiled by these capricious winds. They have been postponed several times. But no one is letting these obstacles of fate get them down, plan Bs have been activated. It would take more than that to discourage French temerity, carried to its best during this first half of the Olympiad.